Gold, silver, pgms, mining and geopolitical comment and news

London bullion dealer, Sharps Pixley, one of the oldest names in the business whose roots go back to 1778, has opened London and the UK’s first bullion showroom in the heart of one of the UK capital city’s most prestigious business and shopping areas at 54 St James’s Street, around 100 yards from Piccadilly Circus. The state-of-the-art premises, which officially open today (the 14th January), will allow investors access to fine quality precious metals (gold, silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium) in a variety of forms. Investment products will range from 1 gram sizes up to 400 ounce market bars as well as coins minted around the world. The shop also stocks an exclusive collection of jewellery, watches and gifts in high purity gold.

The showroom is hugely impressive – a real standout look in this most exclusive area of London. In addition to the bullion and other sales facilities noted above it also provides world class vaulting arrangements plus 2,500 safe deposit boxes enabling clients to store their purchases, or alternatively offering peace of mind for any other valuables they wish to store in absolute security. Investors who purchase gold and hold it on the premises are exempt from v.a.t. as long as it remains there.

As Ross Norman, Sharps Pixley’s CEO, says. “There is a strong case for owning gold as a long term store of value, especially during periods of economic uncertainty and geopolitical tensions. It is our mission to make precious metals both more visible and accessible here in the UK. Gold has exhibited a four thousand year track record of wealth preservation and offers investors protection or insurance against economic crises”.

London is considered by many as the global epicentre for gold trading at the professional level but in spite of this, physical metal has never in the past been so readily accessible to every day investors in a proper showroom in the UK.

The company’s team of experts will be on hand to offer information and advice to all manner of clients, from institutional investors to first time buyers, as the business is already famed for providing best-in-class information on precious metals. Immediate information is also available on the Sharps Pixley website – www.sharpspixley.com

The showroom also boasts a range of gold bullion testing equipment to verify the assay of the gold and to facilitate the purchase of metal back from clients. It is all in the name of giving investors unparalleled confidence in the quality of the metals they purchase.

None of this would have been possible without the support of Sharps Pixley’s parent company, Germany’s Degussa Goldhandel which reckons to be one of the world’s biggest bullion dealers. Degussa acquired the Sharps Pixley business just over five years ago. The German parent already successfully operates 14 similar showrooms in cities across the world including nine in Germany, two in Switzerland and has more recently opened up in Madrid and Singapore. Chief Executive of Degussa, Wolfgang Wrzesnoik-Rossbach, is confident that expansion into the UK will mark a huge shift in the business. He said “Having a presence in the UK is absolutely paramount to our ambitions. London is one of the biggest professional bullion markets in the world and we are uniquely positioned to extend the experience we have gained in democratizing gold, or making it available to ordinary investors in Germany by successfully growing our business to our colleagues in London.”

Sharps Pixley is now the only London-based bullion trader providing retail physical precious metal bars and coins on the High Street to UK investors with secure storage solutions. In addition to the new showroom, Sharps Pixley also offers an online web shop where customers can purchase bullion and which provides an information platform where customers can browse precious metals news, research and analysis. The website is also a great source for precious metals news and comment, some written by Sharps Pixley personnel, and offers instantaneous gold price information during global trading hours.